Poll: Support for Obama tax plan

By a 2-to-1 margin, Americans believe President Barack Obama’s plan to raise taxes on those making more than $250,000 a year would help the economy and make the tax system more fair, according to a Pew Research Center poll.

Forty-four percent believe raising taxes on incomes of more than $250,000 will help the economy, while 22 percent believe it will hurt, Pew found.

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Democrats are more united in their view than Republicans: 64 percent of Democrats say the move will help the economy, and 11 percent say it will hurt. Among the GOP, 41 percent say it will hurt the economy while 27 percent say it will help, and 24 percent say it will make no difference.

Fifty-five percent of Republicans believe tax hikes would either make the system more fair or have no impact, compared with 36 percent who believe it will become less fair, the poll, released Monday, showed. Sixty-five percent of Democrats say the system would be fairer, and 10 percent say it would be less fair.

The views of independents track the views of the country as a whole. Forty-one percent believe tax hikes on the wealthy will help, 18 percent believe they will hurt, and 30 percent say they’ll have no impact on the economy. Forty-four percent believe the hikes would make the tax system more fair, and 21 percent believe they would make the system less fair. Those numbers match the country as a whole exactly.

Support for tax hikes on those making more than $250,000 is a boon for Democrats, who on Monday renewed a vow not to undo defense cuts included in the sequester unless increased revenues were included in the deal. Obama has pledged not to extend the Bush-era tax cuts for those with incomes above $250,000 for a second time when they expire at the end of the year.